Day from hell

Omg you guys today was so awful. I will turn its lemon-ness into lemonade, like a non-musical, uncoordinated version of Beyoncé. If Beyoncé were, horrors, a blogger.

It started with the discovery that for the second day in a row, Bisou—poodle, 11—had peed in the bed. When I say “the bed” I mean the dog bed she sleeps in downstairs. Kidding! I of course mean the one in the master I mean primary I mean dog urine impacted bedroom.

This was a problem for a couple of reasons. The immediate one: a duvet that’s difficult to squeeze into a washing machine, and that requires 3 goes in the dryer (facts we’d been reminded of yesterday). The only immediate-ish: needing to get Bisou asap back to the vet, a new vet we’re happy with and who’s within walking distance, but still, a vet, with all the anxiety and $$$ that implies.

Why did she do this, a dog who otherwise saves the maybe every other year indoor pee for an affront like a child getting birthday presents without anyone having remembered to get her something as well? We don’t know. It is a medical mystery. It will take the veterinary version of Dr. House to make sense of this. Or at the very least, more tests. Probably nothing dire, but I am worst-case-scenario-ing.

But at least the appointment was first thing in the morning, so I could dive into a work marathon, working through lunch. (I mean, also eating, but while working.) Then it hit me that there was this micro-moment between urgent work and school/daycare pickup, just long enough to go to the close by but distant-feeling supermarket, a glamorous establishment by the name of No Frills, for a shop we’d been putting off for far too long. But I’ve had it with getting bits and bobs from fruit stands, so I took the Aston Martin (the jumbo wire shopping cart that squeaks) out of the mud room (having a mud room is, at least, chic), and rolled it on over.

No Frills was such a treat! They somehow, for once, had everything, much of it on sale. Maybe Galen Weston feels bad about being hated, although I don’t know why he’s hated, can only infer, having seen a headline to that effect. I filled the shopping cart to capacity and headed for the checkout only to discover.

NO CREDIT CARD.

No cash or debit, either. I had thought I was being so practical, putting my credit card in my pocket and not bringing a bag, what with the haul I was anticipating. The same pocket as held shopping list, phone, keys, mask about which I’m ambivalent but if a situation’s crowded enough maybe it comes out. I’d been reaching into this pocket for this and that all along.

Brilliant, Phoebe, well done.

Scoured the store, which is huge and big-box and not like a Manhattan supermarket if that’s what you’re picturing (if you’re not my mother, are you reading this, and then again if you are, you’ve been to that No Frills so why am I describing it).

I had to go, tail (by which I mean bursting shopping cart) between my legs to customer service, where I learned that what you do in that situation is, you leave the cart there (thank goodness they allow this), report that your card is possibly lost somewhere in the store, speedwalk home, and come back with… what?

Had I actually just left my credit card at home? I was fairly certain I had not, but could hope. I figured I would return to the store with my debit card (the groceries!), but realized I’d also have to cancel my credit card, which would probably be a whole thing, and there was that cart waiting, not with ice cream or anything super-perishable, but nevertheless.

I’d almost gotten home when I saw it, on a neighbor’s front yard. Someone had kindly put it there. Whoever you are, THANK YOU. So I returned home, put this back into my wallet, and then speedwalked back to the store, this time with my entire wallet, in my bag, not taking any chances.

Bought the groceries, pulled the rather heavy shopping cart home, wondering if I had left my hat, my favorite one, the only one I wear all the time, at home, because if not…

Nope, hat was not at home. Hat was—spoiler, is—somewhere between home and No Frills, or in the No Frills, or, best case scenario, on the head of a desperate hat-needer who had spotted it somewhere along the way. I did call the store to let them know I’d possibly left my hat there but honestly at this point they’d be justified in banning me for life.

But it’s such a good hat. So I took the possibly-incontinent poodle back to retrace my steps through what is, I’m sorry to say, the least exciting part of Toronto under the best of circumstaces. No hat.

I am grasping at silver linings here. Things like, I had been considering going running, knew there wouldn’t be time, but wound up working out after all. Or: apparently hats like the one I lost go on sale in mid-January so I have ordered what I hope will be an even nicer one and is at any rate quite a bit less expensive. (I was trying to be austere and not do this and then went outside in a couple different backup hats and realized that I do in fact live in Canada.)

Or: at least nothing actually terrible happened today. It felt awful all of this as it was happening, but at least a meteor didn’t land on Toronto. In hindsight, even very recent, I am aware that worse things can happen than an 11-year-old poodle having wet the bed, or than whatever the blur was I just decribed, involving the No Frills.

The real tragedy, though, is that I have also lost my PC Optimum points card. Now how will the panopticon give me loyalty points based on how many bags of salt-and-pepper potato chips I have put into a shopping cart?

As all this was taking place I was of course of course of course thinking about the commenter to my Prince Harry piece who took issue with my criticisms, on account of my not having the lived experience of being a member of the British royal family.